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Thirty million Americans – about nine percent of the country's population – suffer from diabetes mellitus or simply from diabetes . This chronic condition is characterized by persistently high blood sugar levels. In many patients the symptoms can be treated with insulin injections and lifestyle changes, in others the complications can be fatal. You need to know the following about diabetes mellitus.

. 1 There are three types of diabetes.

In healthy people, the pancreas produces enough hormone insulin to convert sugar into glucose and transport the glucose to cells where it is used for energy.

People with type 2 diabetes ̵

1; The most common form of the disease, which accounts for about 95 percent of cases, either can not produce enough insulin to transport the sugar, or their cells have become insulin resistant. The result is an accumulation of glucose in the blood (a.k.a. high blood sugar or hyperglycemia). Type 2 diabetes typically occurs in adults.

Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, accounts for the remaining 5 percent of chronic cases and is most common in children and young adults. Under this condition, the initial problem is not in blood sugar levels, but in insulin production: the pancreas can not produce enough insulin to process even normal amounts of glucose. As a result, the sugar increases and leads to dangerous levels in the bloodstream.

The third form, gestational diabetes, affects only pregnant women who were not diabetic before pregnancy. The mother's blood sugar level usually rises at the 24th week of pregnancy, but with a healthy diet, exercise and insulin shots, in some cases, the diabetes symptoms can usually be treated. In patients, the blood sugar level normalizes again after pregnancy.

. 2 Mellitus in diabetes mellitus means "honey sweet".

About 3000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians described a condition with diabetes-like symptoms, but it has not yet been labeled as diabetes. It took several hundred years for the Greek doctor Araetus of Kappodokia to obtain the name Diabetes which is based on the Greek word for "passage" (as in the delivery of lots of urine, a common diabetes symptom). The English physician Thomas Willis took up the word mellitus which means "honey sweet", and in 1675 built on the observations of previous physicians, according to which diabetics had a sweet urine. Finally, another English physician named Matthew Dobson in 1776 confirmed that both blood and urine from diabetes patients were sweetened by high blood sugar levels.

. 3 The cause of one type of diabetes is well known. the other not so much.

A human's lifestyle is an important predictor of the development of type 2 diabetes. Factors such as overweight or obesity, a high-calorie diet, smoking and infrequent training contribute to the risk. High sugar content foods and drinks – lemonade, sweets, ice cream, dessert – can contribute to hyperglycemia. However, high calorie foods can increase blood sugar levels, even if they are not sweet.

In contrast, medical specialists are not entirely sure what causes of type 1 diabetes exist. We know that Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body attacks and damages insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Some scientists suggest that environmental factors like viruses can trigger this immune response.

. 4 The family history also plays a role in diabetes risk.

If a parent or sibling suffers from type 2 diabetes, you are susceptible to the development of pre-and type 2 diabetes. Living habits explain some of these incidents, as family members may have similar diets and exercise habits. Genetics also matter, but just because a close relative has diabetes does not mean that you are destined for it. Investigations on identical twins with identical genes revealed that the pairs have a mismatched risk. In twins, in which one suffers from type 1 diabetes, the other has only a 50 percent chance of developing diabetes. for Type 2, the risk for the second twin is 75 percent or less.

. 5 Racial minorities are at a higher risk of developing diabetes.

Many racial minorities in the US are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Black Americans, Latin Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and some groups of Asian Americans are more likely to suffer from pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes than white Americans. This can be explained in part by the fact that some of these groups also have a higher rate of obesity, which is one of the major risk factors for type 2 diabetes. The socioeconomic may also play a role: one study shows that people living with poverty in diabetes are less likely to visit diabetes clinics and get the appropriate tests than their middle-income counterparts. According to another study, diabetics without health insurance have higher blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels than insured diabetics. In contrast, genetics does not seem to contribute to these trends.

. 6 Diabetes is one of the deadliest diseases in the world.

People with diabetes can lead a long and comfortable life if treated properly. However, if the disease is not treated, it can have serious consequences. Diabetics are the majority of people who develop chronic kidney disease, who suffer from blindness, and require lower limb amputations. In the most severe cases, diabetes leads to death. The disease is one of the deadliest diseases in the world, killing more people than breast cancer and AIDS together.

. 7 Millions of Americans are pre-diabetic.

According to the CDC, 84 million adults in the US are pre-diabetic: their blood sugar is higher than considered safe, but has not yet reached the level of diabetes. For pre-diabetics, the blood glucose level is between 100 and 125 milligrams per deciliter after eight hours of fasting, and the diabetic level is slightly higher. People with pre-diabetes not only have a higher risk for type 2 diabetes, but also for heart disease and stroke. Fortunately, people diagnosed with pre-diabetes can take steps to become healthier, increase their physical activity, and test their blood sugar levels several times a day to control the condition. In some cases, doctors will prescribe medications such as metformin, which make the body more receptive to the insulin it produces.

. 8 After decades of increase, the incidence of diabetes is falling.

In the US, the rate of new diagnoses increased by 382 percent between 1988 and 2014. 108 million people worldwide had diabetes in 1980, compared with 422 million in 2014.

Thanks to nationwide education and prevention efforts, the trend in the US has reversed, according to the CDC. Since the peak in 2009, the number of new diabetes cases in America has dropped by 35 percent. In the same period, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in the US has increased to a plateau, suggesting that people with this disease live longer.

. 9 The first successful treatment for type 1 diabetes was in 1922.

Before the 20th century, type 1 diabetes was usually fatal. Diabetic ketoacidosis – a poisonous accumulation of chemicals called ketones, which are created when the body can no longer use glucose and instead splits up other tissues for energy – killed most patients within a year or two after diagnosis. Canadian physician Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best, in search of ways to rescue children with juvenile diabetes (type 1), built on the work of previous researchers who demonstrated that removing a pancreas in a dog immediately leads to diabetes. Symptoms in the animal. Banting and best-extracted insulin from dog pancreas at the University of Toronto Professor J.J.R. Macleod's lab. After injecting the insulin into dogs whose pancreas had been removed, they found that the blood sugar level was hormonally regulated. On January 11, 1922, they administered insulin to a human patient and further refined the extract to reduce side effects. In 1923, Banting and Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work.

In the 1950s, physicist Rosalyn Yalow and her research partner Solomon Berson developed a method for measuring the smallest amounts of substances in the blood. Inspired by the struggle of Yalow's husband with diabetes, Yalow focused her research on insulin. Their "radioimmunoassay" technology showed that some diabetic patients were still able to produce their own insulin, which led them to create two separate categories for the disease: "insulin-dependent" (type 1) and "non-insulin-dependent" (type 2) )). Before this discovery in 1959, there was no difference between the two types. In 1977, Yalow won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for Radioimmunoassay, one of only 12 Nobel Prize winners in medicine.

. 11 Making an insulin dose once required tons of pork pieces.

Insulin is relatively easy to make today. Most of what is used for injections comes from a special, non-pathogenic laboratory strain of E. coli bacteria that were genetically engineered to produce insulin, but that was not always the case. Until about 40 years ago, 2 tons of porcine pancreas were required to produce only 8 ounces of pure insulin. The pork pieces were typically recycled from pig farms.

12th A quarter of diabetic patients do not know they have it.

The symptoms of type 2 diabetes can develop for years before patients remember to ask their doctor about it. These include frequent urination, unexplained thirst, numbness in the extremities, dry skin, blurred vision, fatigue, and slow-healing wounds – signs that are not a cause for concern but can be a more serious problem together. Patients with type 1 diabetes may also experience nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain.

The symptoms of diabetes are severe but sometimes easy to miss. That's why 25 percent of the sick, 7.2 million in the US, are not diagnosed. And that figure does not even cover the majority of people with pre-diabetes who do not know they're on their way to diabetes.